The Oscars: Going for Gold (or What links Leonardo DiCaprio to Irish broadcaster Henry Kelly)

Being a film bore buff, I look forward to getting up to watch the Oscars each year. Such is my enthusiasm for this, the biggest annual luvvie group hug and mutual backslapping celebration of film, that when the show has finished and I arrive at work (usually a little late) to find people already hard at work or in meetings, I actually feel a bit disappointed for them at having clearly missed at least the big awards, if not the whole thing. Don't they care who got Best Film? Surely everyone likes going to the movies and, in so doing, has a view about what films in the year they liked and what films they didn't. The purpose of watching the Oscars (for that vast majority who have no personal connection to anyone up for an award) is to derive reassuring comfort, however shallow it may be, from the knowledge that the films you most enjoyed watching in the previous 12 months were, to those regarded as being "in the know" (ie. the film industry), similarly recognised for their quality.

The King's Speech was a good film. And it's great that the British sweeped the board on most of the main awards (best film, director, actor and supporting actor, original screenplay, etc). It won 4 awards. But whilst it is difficult to say which was "best" since the two are so completely different films, my personal favourite film of last year was Inception, which won 4 awards also. However, its awards were largely technical - no less important to why the film was, in my opinion, excellent, but since the recipients of those awards are not stars that anyone has really heard of, it will be the King's Speech that is regarded more highly.

Since I haven't seen all 10 films that were nominated, I don't feel entitled to say whether or not it should have won, but nonetheless I would have liked to see Inception get Best Film, as well as Best Director (the latter for which it now seems customary to regard as a travesty that it was not even nominated) and, in particular, Best Score because the soundtrack, which is on constant repeat on my ipod at present, is really good. Try this as a taster - it starts quiet, but turn it up loud and let it grow.

The score to Inception was written by Hans Zimmer, who also wrote the scores for The Pacific, The Dark Knight, Batman Begins, Gladiator, Crimson Tide, Pearl Harbour, Black Hawk Down, The Last Samurai and parts of Pirates of the Caribbean. All big movies, but bizarrely, perhaps his shining moment was in also being responsible for this (the answer to the question which heads this blog entry). Now doesn't that take you back!

[Postscript 1: I could, alternatively, have titled this blog post "What links King George VI with Ant & Dec?" The answer is Tom Hooper, who won Best Director at this year's Oscars. In addition to being the director of The King's Speech (hence King George VI), it turns out that he started his career directing episodes of Byker Grove.... Oh, don't you just love Wikipedia!]

[Postscript 2: Having resigned from my job last week (see separate blogpost to follow soon), I am actually quite brain-fryingly, mind-numbingly bored this week. And yet I'm hiding it so well, don't you think....?!]